Unravelling the Mystery of the Cuyahoga County vote totals

[Skinner]

This is a follow-up to some of the discussions from this earlier thread where some DU members noted a discrepancy between the total votes reported from certain precincts, and the sum of the sub-districts in that precinct.

A lurker sent me this email, which shows that the "markup" in some of the counties is exactly the same. Check it out...

From: XXXXXXX
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: Cuyahoga County

I have looked at the data posted by the county, and saw something really unusual - different municipalities have the exact same number of "extra" votes.

I sent the following commentary to the author of the original article:
------------------
Looking over the posted turnout data, I have several observations that you may already have made:

* Typically, the "extra" votes appear in the totals for the municipality. Where the municipality is broken down by ward, the sum of the wards does not match the total for the municipality.

* If we use the sum of the wards as the turnout, the numbers are reasonable (about 60%). I suspect the ward counts are accurate.

* The sum of the wards and the reported total for the municipality DIFFERS BY THE SAME AMOUT IN MULTIPLE MUNICIPALITIES. That is to say, differnent towns have the exact same number of "extra" votes.

Examples:

Bedford
registered voters: 9942
votes cast - municipality: 14465 (145% turnout)
votes cast - (sum of wards): 5912 (59% turnout)
difference between ward and municipality: 8553

Warrensville Heights
registered voters: 10562
votes cast - municipality: 15039 (142% turnout)
votes cast - (sum of wards): 6486 (61% turnout)
difference between ward and municipality: 8553

Fairview Park
registered voters: 13342
votes cast - municipality: 18472(110% turnout)
votes cast - (sum of wards): 8524 (64% turnout)
difference between ward and municipality: 9948

Westlake
registered voters: 25627
votes cast - municipality: 25173 (98% turnout)
votes cast - (sum of wards): 15225 (59% turnout)
difference between ward and municipality: 9948

I do not know whether recounts have been formally requested, if results data broken down by ward has been requested from the county or state.

[Scout]

1. wow

has this been forwarded to Rep Conyers to add to the collection?

[Lilli]

2. FYI: CNN is working on the story now

A poster at another board I belong to works at Fairview Park City Hall and CNN called to check facts.

[mzmolly]

59. WOW

Good news!

[Nordic]

60. CNN would only check it so they'd know what to bury

you can bet your ass CNN will work to refute any facts that we have. I'm sure their "pundits" are already working and writing scripts.

[leftchick]

62. More likely trying to Quash the story....

I don't believe for one second they are trying to find the truth. They are trying to cover Karl's tracks for him.

[txindy]

3. Hmm. Well, I'd like to calculate the odds on something like that happening

Anybody got a super-computer handy? Sheesh. :eyes: Somebody was busy cutting and pasting on the database during the election. Not creative, just busy. :evilgrin:

Nice catch, 'lurker'. Many thanks! :toast:

[Carl Brennan]

4. WOW!! I remember in 2000 that some thing like three politicians

in receieved the exact same number of votes. I'll try to dig that up.

[Eloriel]

13. 18,181 vote margin wins for 3 diff. Republicans, all in Comal Co., TX

Ain't it grand.

[Pastiche423]

37. Wasn't that in 2002?

[ROH]

47. It was 2002 ... there were 5 cases of 18,181 votes ... all for Republicans

2002 Elections ... reference here:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00064.htm

Who won by 18181 votes in 2002 election?
DANNY SCHEEL (Texas): 18,181 votes (Comol County)
CARTER CASTEEL (Texas): 18,181 votes (Comol Country)
JEFF WENTWORTH (Texas): 18,181 votes (Comol County)
CANDICE MILLER (Michigan): 18,181 Votes (Lapeer County)
MICHAEL SMIGIEL (Maryland): 18,181 Votes (St. Anne's)
All five won and all five Republicans.

[Merrickgds]

63. looks to me like an SQL query was run on the database & updated the totals

I'm just guessing here, but as a programmer, this pattern conjures up the scenario of:
a repugnican operative working with a programmer who knows about the voting databases, coming up with a fast, undetectable way of altering numbers in the database. The programmer writes an SQL query type thingy to run through the tables of the database & add a random number to each desired vote total.

Either the operative ran the SQL query on the database in person, or it was run remotely. I'm not familiar with remote connectivity databases but i'm sure it can be done. The operative can now just use the same SQL query wherever he wants the vote to be altered.. quick & easy.

If i was the programmer, i'd have used a random number for each of the vote totals, not the same as that arouses suspicion. Using the same random number is just sloppy.

[bear425]

5. Please send this to Bev Harris

[email protected]

[johnnie]

6. That's interesting

I sent my letter to my Representative Dennis Kucinich about what happened in our county (Cuyahoga) and sent him the link to DU. I should have sent more links to this information. There were a few of them that were pretty interesting.
I hope he gets over here, or has someone look here.

[milkyway]

22. Do you know if Dennis K. is looking into the vote counting in Ohio?

[johnnie]

30. I don't know

Of course IF I get a reply I will post it here at DU. I'm not quite sure I will get one, but he has my info.

[Jersey Devil]

33. Good question because I believe it is his district

Could be mistaken but I think at least some of these towns are his.

[johnnie]

38. They are

It's where I live. Half of them are Dennis'.

[St. Jarvitude]

64. DK is just the kind of person we need to lead us!

I'm actually rather shocked he hasn't said anything publically about voter fraud... it seems to me this sort of thing is right up his alley in terms of his political activism.

DRAFT DENNIS!!

[teevee99]

amazing.

hopefuly the msm will get on this story. we need a woodward & berstein like nobody's business.

[ramblin_dave]

7. Has anyone added up all the votes

from the wards (ignoring the suspect sums of wards) to see if this totals up to the grand totals for each candidate county wide?

[troubleinwinter]

8. Peee-eeew! Somethin sure does stink.

Been sent to Bev, I assume?

[Scout]

11. LOL

something sure does stink! my dog just farted as I read that .... aaaargggghhhhh, nasty one

of course he's laying right at my feet...


But yes, this election fraud sure does stink, even worse than do dog farts!

[karlrschneider]

9. So these "coincidences" depend on 1 in 9948 and 1 in 8553 odds. Hm.

Incredible. (literally)
:eyes: :grr:

[Critical Thinker]

10. very interesting catch

...the plot thickens

[high density]

12. That looks quite suspicious

Good thing that John Kerry is on it with his massive team of lawyers and his GELAC fund.


(Just kidding!)

[bear425]

14. Just emailed it to Randi at AAR n/t

[4dsc]

89. Randi will not let this story die!!`

Not like most of the defeatist democrat's at AAR.. I refuse to listen to any of them are they surrendered to the dark side and are not repeating the corporate mantra that bush won!!!

Keep hammering away Randi!!

[ParanoidPat]

15. 18181, 18181, 18181, 18181, 18181, 18181, 18181, 18181, 18181, 18181

Act now before it's deadbeef. :evilgrin:

[jmc777]

17. Are you laughing at ME?

:toast:

[ParanoidPat]

23. I hope I'm laughing with you.......

.......at the transparency of it all! :evilgrin: :toast:

[batchdem04]

16. Check out this spreadsheet

http://rncmoblog.com/kerry/cuyahoga.xls

It looks like Cuyahoga County's website has wrong information on it.

For example, on the spreadsheet, look at the Westlake districts. If you sum all the Pres votes you get 15,080 which is very close to 15,225.

The sum of Fairview Park is 8,421.

The sum of Warrensville Heights is 6,343.

The sum of Bedford is 5,837.

Also, as a final check, if you sum ALL the Pres votes for all the districts you get 652,381 - which matches the results on the Ohio main website and the CNN website.

[txindy]

20. Then where did this batch of Cuyahoga County's numbers come from?

[batchdem04]

26. looks like she found out

http://pages.ivillage.com/americans4america/id20.html

[shelley806]

18. Very fishy...what type of voting (cheating) machines were used?...n/t

[Jersey Devil]

19. Sounds like a batch program to just add votes here and there

This morning I checked the demographics of these towns, virtually all what look like Republican suburbs of Cleveland, pretty high incomes, expensive homes, etc., high percentage of whites.

We wouldn't look in Repub areas for cheating would we, since previous cheating (2000 in Fla) consisted of skimming votes FROM the Democrat in Democratic districts. This is a new twist. It adds them in Repub districts that wouldn't be noticed.

Except for one thing - in 2000 you didn't have 50,000 DUers poring over every voting statistic online.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[txindy]

24. Welcome to DU

Interesting choice for a first post

[Jersey Devil]

28. LOL, dead issue my ass

The evidence is getting stronger and stronger.

[Jo March]

29. wiggsvoted, the party DID connect with the people

Hell, we ARE the freaking people. Did you miss the massive turnouts for Kerry/Edwards? What were those? Figments of our imagination?

Go Cheney yourself.

[shelley806]

39. Can we smell (oops) spell diversion? or ridiculous...your post is...

[w13rd0]

45. hahahaha

hahahah, ig only trees and cattle could vote

[DELUSIONAL]

48. blaming the victim -- the media was virtually ignoring the

democratic candidates -- and they gave the idiot boy free air time for his rantings.

The facts are the DEM message did connect -- exit polling is the proof. We have the majority messages

But we don't control the media

And we didn't count the vote.

[Carolab]

74. SPOT ON

At my Meetup tonight I had a rant on this very thing:

WE DON'T CONTROL THE MEDIA

WE DON'T CONTROL THE VOTE

The root of ALL our problems.

[DELUSIONAL]

79. We have to keep hitting our twin message

WE DON'T CONTROL THE MEDIA

WE DON'T CONTROL THE VOTE

Various people keep posting the psyop message from the corporate media and we really need to keep pointing out that Kerry/Edwards simply did not have the same press coverage that bush had in this election.

[intheflow]

53. Welcome to DU

Since you're new, maybe you don't realize that there will be other posts to reply to that will address your concerns with the Democratic Party.

[FighttheFuture]

31. Part of the bigger strategy, must get popular vote fixed too...

They need to cheat in many ways because they also have to pad the "popular" vote to give the chimp some more "legitimacy". The media was really getting tired of their dark brown "tan" and obviously wanted to try to lighted it a bit.

Look at New Hampshire, although a Kerry state, many more Bush votes occurred than expected. Let Kerry have the state; just rob some from Kerry to pad the popular vote.

This is a very well coordinated strategy for a coup de-tat. The questions is, will it get out to the masses of sheeple? Keith Obierman was very brave on MSNBC, but he is not enough.

[Renew Deal]

35. I don't think it's a program necessarily.

I think someone went through a map knowing how much they needed to take. That's why the numbers would match like that. The fraud would be distributed evenly.

[Jersey Devil]

25. Skinner, saw a post at Kos saying it may be absentee ballots

that are distributed to the wrong districts evenly instead of being applied to the proper districts, thus accounting for the repetition in overvoting but I don't buy that explanation.

[batchdem04]

27. **PAGE IS UPDATED**

http://pages.ivillage.com/americans4america/id20.html

[Reynman]

40. so this is a false alarm...?

Do I read this latest post correctly? This was a false alarm and the numbers are fairly attributed to absentee ballots?

Too bad... meaty stuff otherwise. Thanks for your efforts in crunching these numbers!

[Skinner]

52. I've started a new thread with this info.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x33760

I must admit, I'm totally stumped at this point.

[elaineb]

36. It does seem to have to do with absentee ballots

because the author of the web site that caused all of this excitement posted an updated page suggesting that he/she talked to someone at the county level, and he/she now seems to be satisfied that the absentee ballots account for the high ballot counts.

http://pages.ivillage.com/americans4america/id20.html

If anyone remembers the earlier version of this page, you'll notice it's been updated today.

[Skinner]

44. Could you explain this to me?

If these are absentee ballots, why would they push the total number of votes over the number of registered voters?

[Jersey Devil]

49. Just going by memory now but the Kos article

basically said they may have split up the total absentee vote without regard to where the votes came from and then equally assigned them to various districts without regard to where they came from and then at the end, when they reach a grand total for the state, add them back together. Sure it would explain it but it makes absolutely no sense to me because there are local elections that have to know the results of the absentees in those particular districts.

[TorchTheWitch]

80. It doesn't make any sense

If these are absentee ballots, why would they push the total number of votes over the number of registered voters?

Forget all the double-speak... disbursement of absentee votes, blah, blah, blah...

You have to be a registered voter to even get an absentee ballot. If you vote by absentee ballot, you can't vote at the precinct on election day because you already voted by absentee ballot. Therefore, the adding of absentee ballots or where they added them, etc. doesn't mean squat. The fact remains that there are still all these EXTRA votes... MORE votes then there are REGISTERED voters.

To claim that the extra votes are absentee votes would be admission that they didn't do a blessed thing to ensure that absentee voters didn't ALSO vote at the poll on election day, i.e., they'd be admitting that they let all these people vote twice.

[Live Free Or Diebold]

50. The absentee ballots explanation does not hold water.

There are only 80,624 absentee ballots in the whole of Cuyahoga county. How can they account for 90,000+ extra votes?

[Logansquare]

85. Your webpage sort of explains it, but

why the hell would the B of Elections add the same number several times to different precincts? One would think that an absentee ballot would be applied to the precinct in which a person resides or last resided before leaving the country.

[shelley806]

32. I just sent this thread via e-mail to Keith Olbermann. n/t

[Jo March]

42. Great minds!

I saw that someone had sent it to Randi. Who else can we hit? Hell, how about all of the media idiots? I can do that tonight.

Media blaster, here I come!

[Jo March]

34. I'm sending this to Keith Olbermann

NOW

[ramblin_dave]

46. Can you send him a "never mind"?

The site that started it all has been updated:

http://pages.ivillage.com/americans4america/id20.html

[Renew Deal]

51. That still doesn't make sense.

How do you come up with more votes than voters?

[pk_du]

41. WOW..........just googled "18181 votes"...check it out

Must be a hundred stories about electronic voting from favoring Repubs in 2002.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=18181+votes

[intheflow]

56. I like the Thom Hartmann piece from 2002 I found on this list:

This could have been written today, just change the written dates and tally numbers. Very creepy!

The Theft of Your Vote Is Just a Chip Away
By Thom Hartmann

Are computerized voting machines a wide-open back door to massive voting fraud? The discussion has moved from the Internet to CNN, to UK newspapers, and the pages of The New York Times. People are cautiously beginning to connect the dots, and the picture that seems to be emerging is troubling.

"A defective computer chip in the county's optical scanner misread ballots Tuesday night and incorrectly tallied a landslide victory for Republicans," announced the Associated Press in a story on Nov. 7, just a few days after the 2002 election. The story added, "Democrats actually won by wide margins."

(snip)

The Texas incidents happened with computerized machines reading and then tabulating paper or punch-card ballots. In Georgia and Florida, where paper had been totally replaced by touch-screen machines in many to most precincts during 2001 and 2002, the 2002 election produced some of the nation's most startling results.

USA Today reported on Nov. 3, 2002, "In Georgia, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with a 49%-to-44% lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss." Cox News Service, based in Atlanta, reported just after the election (Nov. 7) that, "Pollsters may have goofed" because "Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland by a margin of 53 to 46 percent. The Hotline, a political news service, recalled a series of polls Wednesday showing that Chambliss had been ahead in none of them."

Just as amazing was the Georgia governor's race. "Similarly," the Zogby polling organization reported on Nov. 7, "no polls predicted the upset victory in Georgia of Republican Sonny Perdue over incumbent Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes. Perdue won by a margin of 52 to 45 percent. The most recent Mason Dixon Poll had shown Barnes ahead 48 to 39 percent last month with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points."

Almost all of the votes in Georgia were recorded on the new touchscreen computerized voting machines, which produced no paper trail whatsoever. And nobody thought to ask for a new chip, although it was noted on Nov. 8 by the Atlanta Constitution-Journal that in downtown Atlanta's predominantly Democratic Fulton County "election officials said Thursday that memory cards from 67 electronic voting machines had been misplaced, so ballots cast on those machines were left out of previously announced vote totals." Officials added that all but 11 of the memory cards were subsequently found and recorded.

(snip)

Plus lots more, other states, same trend as now with bad machines.

http://www.opednews.com/hartmann_theft_of_your_vote_just_a_chip.htm
Hyperlinked text to sources

[ClevelandSportsCurse]

43. Weslake and Fairview Park are conservative

if I am correct. Warrensville Heights has a high African-American population. As for Bedford, I don't know too much about its political demographics, but its high school football stadium has Astroturf, thus perhaps that's a signal to how much money they have.

Westlake has its good share of wealth. A lot of Browns and Indians players live there.

[Chili]

71. Bedford...

I used to live in Bedford Hts, went to Bedford HS. Bedford is middle class, mostly white, very little real wealth there, if any at all. But it did have more than a little taint of red-neck about it when I was in school (many years ago :) ). Hopefully it has changed since then, it's wedged between Bedford Hts, and Oakwood, both predominently black suburbs.

[Cory]

54. Absentees

I spoke with county officials yesterday and it was explained that absentee ballots fell within broader Congressional districts rather than specific voting precincts. The absentees were dispersed (it looks like evenly) across the voting precincts within the report, skewing the voter turnout percentages. That's why the media is not covering the story that looks obvious to everyone else.

It's an odd way of doing things and the county is not doing a good job of explaining it.

[shuffnew]

86. Seems this is fraud beyond reason...

Well, this is not an acceptable answer. Do they have a central database then to ensure that these absentee voters did not vote personally in their own precinct too? This is not just sloppy, this should be illegal period! There is no credible rationale to just take all absentee ballots and spread them around equally to different precincts w/o any name checking for double voting especially!

[DUBYASCREWEDUS]

55. CUYAHOGA COUNTY ALWAYS VOTES DEMOCRATIC

Something is rotten in Ohio. Has anyone given this information to Kucinich? I have been reading this all day on your site and other sites. Why isn't on the news? Why isn't someone yelling from roof tops - THEY REPUGS STOLE ANOTHER ELECTION!

[ClevelandSportsCurse]

57. It does have its suburban Republican strongholds

Places like Cleveland and Lakewood are strongly Democratic and the working class in the suburbs vote Democratic, but there are some very strong wealthy Republican strongholds in the eastern and western edges of the county.

[high density]

58. 9948 in hexadecimal...

is 0x26DC or 0x2600 + 0xDC

Interesting, but probably nothing.

[pointsoflight]

61. It's the turnout numbers that I wonder about. Look here.

Cuyahoga county--where Cleveland resides--was critical to this election. The Kerry campaign was counting on this county to carry Ohio, and had that happened, he would've won the majority of electoral votes. What happened in Coyahoga county? Many things have already been reported, but here's another that I haven't seen talked about....

Late into the night when Bush was leading in Ohio with 90% of precincts reporting, the democratic party was still optimistic of pulling out a win because they were still expecting huge numbers of additional votes from Cleveland that they thought would give them the lead. The votes never materialized. What happened?

55 precincts in Cleveland show a turnout of less than 40%. Several show a turnout of less than 20%, and one even shows a turnout of 7%. That's right, SEVEN PERCENT. Despite reports of very strong ground efforts, record turnouts, and long lines throughout Cleveland, 60, 70, 80, even 90+% of the people who took the time to register didn't bother to show up?!? Or did they? Was there massive voter suppression in these precincts? Were voters in these precincts forced to vote via provisional ballots, ballots that are not audited in Ohio, so that we have no way of knowing how many were cast?

We need to get a handle on this. In the 55 precincts I mention, 84.3% of the counted votes went to Kerry, 15.1% to Bush. We're talking about many thousands of votes here, just in Cleveland alone. It could be that we got a horrific turnout, far worse than our expectations. But it could also be that people showed up and there was massive voter suppression, a massive compaign to challenge voters in these precincts, and/or a massive compaign to force voters into using unaudited (and therefore easily "lost") provisional ballots because of challenges, machine malfunctions, etc. Whatever the case may be, we had a HUGE shortfall of votes from Cuyahoga County and Cleveland in particular--literally tens and tens of thousands less than expected--and we need to see if we can find out why.

Here's the raw data from Cuyahoga County for confirmation:

http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/boe/results/history/2004/1 ...

[cthrumatrix]

67. why are we all just talking about the obvious....where in the hell is

anybody taking action and getting a count and analysis and some answers?

[gasperc]

68. I downloaded the canvas report and I am checking the totals

alot of what posters are saying about the absentee ballots is true. There are dumped into the vote totals of some of the cities and it makes the summary pages look all screwed up but isn't messing up the totals. They are usually reconciled somewhere in the canvas report.

The key thing is to see if the Kerry 433262votes and Bush 215624 votes total up correctly from the individual wards. I have cut and pasted the summary pages to look for clues but nothing has panned out. I have been spot checking various parts of the precinct vote to find one or some that have been goosed. I have'nt been able to reconcile the ward total to the 665334 total votes cast so it keeps me going. The canvas report is huge, 8Meg, and it's extremely difficult to cut and paste it all into an excel file. I've already spent hours just sifting through the summaries. I'll provide updates as I figure out the data and when I hit the jackpot believe me you'll all know about it.

[jmcgowanjm]

82. A Letter from Georgia's Congresswoman-Elect

A Letter from Georgia's Congresswoman-Elect on the Need for Authentic Media

The voters brought me back from the political grave
in disobedience to a Commercial Media that told them I was
too radical for the United States Congress. They
endlessly repeated falsehoods about my family and me.
They distorted my political positions. If you know the story of
the Fourth Congressional District in Georgia, you already
know the score.

But the voters saw through the Commercial Media this
time. Why?

Because an alternative media is rising from below,
through which we were able to correct the record, and
allow authentic truth to shine its light above all the
lies.

The cutting-edge of that alternative media exists on the Internet.
It would not have existed in 2004 if not for the heroic
battles fought by Narco News three years ago to win
press freedom rights for Internet journalism.

http://williambowles.info/media/mckinney.html

http://www.narconews.com/

[kerry2win]

69. 40% turnout city of cleveland

No way had to at least 70% probably closer to 80%. There were long lines and awaited eagerness to throw out *** This county alone could change the whole outcome. thanks for the great info

[RaulVB]

65. Pepper Pike (Cuyahoga County)

Pepper Pike

Registered voters : 5131
Ballot cast : 6479


Some comments,

The data extracted from Cuyahoga BOE is flawed. My experience working with this type of numbers tells me that is unacceptable to end up with EXTRA VOTES AFTER ALLOCATING ABSENTEE BALLOTS TO WARDS OR PRECINCTS.

In my country, just this fact will trigger an inquiry, a broad one.

About Peter Jennings comments, of course he is doing what his bosses told him to do, that is "these guys are crazy, lunatics on the web, partisan fanatics...go say it!"

He is making 7 numbers a year, hardly interested in the truth, correct?

The explanations coming from Cuyahoga county are ridiculous. So, let's say, at least, they have a serious accounting problem???

Please, keep channeling information to Mr. Olbermann. If Jennings's comments are accurate, this is just the beginning of a major push to silence him.

Regards.

[Broken Acorn]

66. Simple SQL Scripting

As a Professional Database Developer, I am amazed at the simplicity of the way these software programs are written. I only learned of this after the results of the election were final, yet the Exit Polls did not match the margin of victory. At this time (last Thursday) I began doing my own research.

Here is my argument (although it's not new) that most of us are failing to recognize.

Each county/precinct around the country conducts polling the day of the election. Canvassers count how many people voted and electronic voting machines tally the votes internally (inside the machines).

These software voting programs are all written using Microsoft Access, a step above Excel and very easy to use. Once each county completes their day, somebody at the polls uploads the Access file usually through a modem or LAN to a state centralized server. The county election officials do not have access to the results, nor do they have the sophistication to commit voter fraud.

Because this voting software is 'proprietary', somebody at ESS/Diebold, etc. has to be managing the state centralized server in order to make sure it doesn't crash. Therefore, it is highly possible that the Network Administrator could open these .mdb files (MS Acces) and switch the voter results but keep the voter count.

That would be the hard part...requiring massive programmers/manpower to manually changing all the individual votes in a coordinated effort one by one.

Now, someone like myself, could easily write custom scripts that would apply to all these .mdb files and run them after they have been uploaded from the counties BUT BEFORE being published to the state servers, thus adding to the overall state results and altering in the process before anyone knows it.

Here’s the crux of my argument. It could be managed remotely in 1 office by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), Remote Desktop Connection (RDC), or any host of remote access programs easily available today by as little as 3 to 5 people on 1 computer each. This would explain 2 mysteries to me.

1) Did anyone else find it odd that the result totals were statistically even or favoring Kerry both in Florida and Ohio most of the night and then all of a sudden…Bush wins big!? The answer to this mystery could be last minute scripts being run on the uploaded .mdb files before being published to the state’s servers.

2) It would also explain the massive irregularities of voter %'s per party vs. who they actually voted for; in addition to explaining the total votes exceeding # registered per county.

Bad scripting and panic attacks by Republican 'hacks' (no pun intended) is a very clear possibility.


As a professional programmer (and IT Administrator), this stuff is not rocket science. You just need access to the right IP addresses and Authentication Privileges to make it happen (and a little experience writing scripts, which they lacked in).

Trust me, I upload (and change) .mdb files remotely all the time on servers for clients of mine around the country that I work for. It’s not that complicated of a process.

I only hope that someone on the inside speaks out if this is potentially true.

[chriscol]

72. SQL scripting

Hmmm. I wonder how difficult it would be to reverse-engineer the code to do this. If one could present the code to make the observed changes, that would be fairly strong circumstantial evidence.

I wish my programming skills were up to the challenge!

[Merrickgds]

78. would these databases/.mdbs have any record that they were modified?

Some software programs keep a log/history of every time(date/time) a record was modified. I've worked some with Access, but haven't seen any logging information in it. If a script was run on the mdbs, would there be any way to verify it?
If the mdbs were modified *after* the counties uploaded them to the central site, wouldn't the counties still have the ..... ?

Somebody needs to immediately collect & inspect the counties mdb's/databases..

[samjohnson]

81. This is the kind of insight needed

to chart a path forward.

We all know the results need to be checked. But what is lacking, IMHO, is a defined set of actions that can quickly hone in on the points where tampering is most likely to have occurred.

Broken Acorn, can you itemize a series of steps to be taken that would conclusively reveal tampering? For example, would a monitored recount of the original .mdb files necessarily reveal a disparity? Or would it have been possible for the hypothetical hackers to have altered the source .mdb files?

Given your understanding of the information flow in this process, it would be great if you could formulate a decision tree that could check the integrity of the most vulnerable stages of vote processing. Ideally, the steps would be ones that could not be easily circumvented by anyone viewing these posts wishing to cover their tracks.

I think this would help us to organize our focus, from the lawyers to the pundits to the rank and file.

[Mister K]

83. It really depends at what level it was modified

If you look at each voting machine as a PC (because it is). Each voting machine keeps its own tally and is then rolled up by many levels. I believe that the votes are stored on Smart Cards. It would be very, very difficult and time consuming to modify every voting machine. Even if you modified one in each district, it would look suspicious.

You would need to modify the data after it has been rolled-up by the precincts. Whomever is running the The GEMS software for the county could have modified it. There is NO audit trail in access.

Now, with this being said, I say we focus on the Smart Cards and sample the data from them and see what they say. That is unless they have been wiped clean already.

[four more wars]

84. An explanation of the results - Mistake not Fraud

First off, this is my first post. So please don't assume I am a Freeper looking to discredit the fraud, but when I first saw the results for Cuyahoga county I was amazed and thought that we had found the smoking gun. I visited the site and extracted the information into excel so I could run some numbers myself. This is what I found:

Total Registered Votes = A
Total Ballots Cast = B
turnout = B/A

these give a turnout figure of about 60%

Then they breakdown the results to individual Wards, some of which are then broken down into Precincts. ALL the crazy results are where they are split into Precincts. So, for a Ward

Total Registered Voters = x
Registered voters Precinct a = xa
Registered voters precinct b = xb
Registered voters Precinct c = xc

now, obviously x should = xa+xb+xc, and in all cases it does.

then we move on to Ballots cast, which again follows the formula

Total Ballots Cast = y
Ballots Cast Precint a = ya
Ballots Cast Precint b = yb
Ballots Cast Precint c = yc

now, again y should = ya+yb+yc however in some cases this is NOT the case, and y is much larger than it should be.

in these cases y is even larger than x so y/x, which should give turnout % is above 100%.

AH HA I thought, here is the proof we needed. However, I thought to run 1 last check. What happens if I manually add up all the ballots cast from each of the Ward totals?. This should equal total Ballots cast for the county. So I did, and unfortunately it is much bigger than B from above. So what happens if I manually correct the individual ward totals to remove the error? I did, re-added and this gave a correct total for B.

So what i concluded was that while the individual ward totals are incorrect and show a crazy turnout, the actual results for the county appear to match the totals by precinct.

I understand that because this is my first post it will be viewed with sceptisim. So I have deliberately left out the numbers so that some of you members with a higher post count can go check the figures yourselves. If I am wrong please post back.

I post this because I think that the vote was definately stolen by Bushco and I worry that things like this have been set up to set us all looking in the wrong places.

What if CNN HAD run this story and then had to go back and say 'sorry guys, actually we got it wrong, it was just a small adding error on the website and it looks like everything was fine.

Bang, there goes our credibility next time we scream FRAUD.

Rob

[EndElectoral]

70. How many registered DEM's versus Registered Repubs in Cuyahoga?

I always see it published as registered voters.

I would be curious to see the breakdown by party.

[MileHiStealth]

73. Probably a stupid question but ....

why split the absentee votes across a bunch of
random wards. Why not just have a column called
"absentee ballots" or would that be too simple ?

[JackRiddler]

75. Yeah, this is exactly what I'm wondering!

It would be simple...

but it wouldn't be creating the total confusion that covers for fraud.

We are looking at the magician's diversion, I suspect.

[MileHiStealth]

76. Than again, I thought the absentee ballots ...

weren't going to be counted for a few more days , so why are
they showing up at all ?

[shraby]

77. How can the absentee ballots

show up in the totals if they aren't even counted yet? The totals given were for counted ballots.

[Jersey Devil]

88. That's the answer - cover by confusion

Befuddle the hell out of anyone looking in. The problem is that they did not anticipate the numbers or the ferocity of those determined to stop the theft.

[germtan]

87. Guyahoga county - no mistakes no fraud

I spent two days trying to get to the bottom of this "more ballots counted vs. registered voters" mess in Cuyahoga County.

I spoke with the Community relations office of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections yesterday. Nov. 10.

The "ballots cast" numbers are inflated due to the software that groups cities or wards that share the same ballot grouping or ballot combination.

For example, Bay Village is in the 10th congressional district, the 16th house district, and the 24th state senate district. 10/16/24 is what is known as a ballot grouping or ballot combination. In even-numbered years, Cuyahoga County's BOE software counts votes by these ballot groupings.

In that ballot grouping are the communities that share the same 10/16/24 designation. That includes cities like Rocky River, Westlake, Fairview Park, and North Olmsted.

So the total ballots cast for Bay Village takes the actual number of ballots cast, plus all the absentee ballots that were cast from those other communities belonging to the 10/16/24 grouping. That's why "ballots cast" is so high.

The software throws in every absentee ballot for that particular 10/16/24 grouping in every community that is part of the grouping. That explains why when you also look at Rocky River, Westlake, Fairview Park, and North Olmsted, the number of" ballots cast" in those cities exceeds "registered" voters as well. (Only Westlake's isn't higher - but it is 25K to 25K).

The reason the numbers are inflated under "Ballots cast" is because the number for Bay Village includes the absentee ballots cast in Bay Village, Rocky River, Westlake and North Olmsted. That's why they are saying it is an absentee ballot issue. They sure could have explained it better.

And the accurate number of votes cast for are at their website. There is a 2000 page report to get the actual number of ballots cast that doesn't include this grouping.

http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/BOE/results/history/2004/EL52.TXT

[Mr Creosote]

91. I'm probably being stupid here

but are you saying that the total for Bay Village includes the absentee ballots for Bay Village, Rocky River, Westlake and North Olmsted etc, and that the total for (eg) Rocky River also includes the absentee ballots for Bay Village, Rocky River, Westlake and North Olmsted etc? In which case the same absentee ballots are included in more than one total.
And in any event how do they know what the number of absentee ballots is, when they STILL haven't counted them?
This may or may not be fraud, but the whole thing is about as transparent as mud. Shouldn't democracy, like justice, be seen to be done?

[HEAVYHEART]

90. Kick